Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is a sudden and unexpected death of an apparently healthy infant whose death remains unexplained after further medical investigation. SIDS is not acknowledged as a disease, nor has it been diagnosed for a living baby. However, many SIDS deaths have been documented where an infant has been sleeping face down. A face down infant is considered by many experts in the field of infant mortality to be a high risk position for a SIDS attributed death because a face down position may lead to periods of apnea (stoppage of breathing). While infants may be resuscitated during a period of apnea, most SIDS events occur at night when the infant's caregiver is sleeping.
Attempts have been made to identify a SIDS event and provide a technological solution to early detection. Once such example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,350,166, APNEA DETECTOR, attempts to identify potential SIDS risks by the detection of long wave infrared radiation typical of carbon dioxide emitted from a breathing infant. However, this type of detector merely identifies that an infant has stopped breathing, which is too late to prevent the SIDS event from occurring. Furthermore, infant body heat can skew the detection of infrared radiation. Another such example is U.S. Pat. No. 6,492,634, OPTICAL MONITOR FOR SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME, where a monitor tracks the movement of a laser beam or light emitting diode projected onto an infant. This device again merely tracks the breathing patterns of the infant and will only initiate an alarm if the infant has stopped breathing as indicated by the movement or lack of movement of the laser beam. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a SIDS detection device capable of detecting high risk movement of an infant prior to any disruption in the infant's breathing pattern.